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Taiwan needs to consider removing the quarantine now that it looks like omicron is going to run its course there just like in Korea and Japan. One reason they a

Taiwan needs to consider removing the quarantine now that it looks like omicron is going to run its course there just like in Korea and Japan. One reason they are not removing it is because the government does not want to be seen as being "wrong" about covid policy. Even China's much more draconian lockdowns on Shanghai will probably not work to prevent the spread of omicron in the future. In both cases, it's a huge waste of resources and damaging to the economy and peoples' liberties.

alephnan 4y ago
> it's a huge waste of resources peoples' liberties Are you an actual resident in Asia or a Westerner armchair philosophizing what people in Asia actually want. Here’s a glimpse from actual Asian people, from a democratic country. These people here are being polite and aren’t saying outright, but a sentiment expressed here that’s pretty common is Asian people thinks it’s admirable that Americans have individual liberty, and acknowledge there are pros and cons to that. If you actually understood Asian culture and why these countries have these policies, then you’d know it’s not really a compliment. In Asia, maybe / kind-of means no. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ctmxV-yNhg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ctmxV-yNhg My partner is Taiwanese, and I am American. We moved Japan to during the pandemic because we don’t agree with the West and Americans’ attitude towards coronavirus. There is a lot of overlap between Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan being more “liberal” in some respects and Japan being conservative, but otherwise people from both countries on average prefer personal inconvenience for the collective good, especially given both of these cultures have a respect for the elderly. We prefer what you call “draconian” measures. Let people who are residents in Asia deal with their governments. Who said people want liberty above all else? Freedom requires responsibility, and America hasn’t been for a while. Worry about the host of problems in America, because Asia is doing just fine. People in the tourism industry are incentivized otherwise, but other people in Taiwan / Japan aren’t minding the inconveniences, so why are you? In fact, people are kind of enjoying the domestic venues without tourists, especially given the high propensity of Westerners who refuse to wear mask ( even when they are vaccinated ).
- gagorder100 4y ago
  Asia is not doing fine and not everyone agrees: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2022/04/19/in-shanghai-anger-and-resistance-are-growing-against-severe-lockdowns_5981000_114.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2022/04/19/in-... The lockdowns are great for the privileged class that "works" via Zoom meetings and can afford to move to another country if the current one does not sufficiently serve its interests.
  - alephnan 4y ago
    So you cherry pick an article about Shanghai, and generalize it to Asia? The West conveniently omits Taiwan’s and Japan’s continued success with Covid for 2 years while the West sacrificed millions. I’m living my life and commuting as normal. Commute hours are packed full shoulder to shoulder. I feel way safer than in New York. New Zealand is another pacific Island that received outsized acclaim from the West. Guess what’s the difference between New Zealand and those Asian countries? There’s also Vietnam, which for a country much lower on the economic progression has done exceedingly well. Ofcourse Westerners and the West will say these Asian countries have skewed data because the don’t have tests. It was nearly impossible to find a covid test within a 2 week time frame in my hometown American city with a population over a million and an NBA team. Even then, I had to use a bot to hog a spot, then pay $200. In Japan, you can receive a test on the day throughout the pandemic and it cost less than $30. 95% of businesses in Japan do temperature checks and require hand sanitizers throughout 2021.
    - josephg 4y ago
      > while the West sacrificed millions Australia and NZ are usually considered part of "the west". Culturally and ethnically, this is certainly true. You're frustrated people lump everyone in Asia together, as if its all one country. Please don't make the same mistake with "the west". We aren't one country either. If you want to criticise the USA's handling of covid, do so. Us westerners aren't a homogeneous block either. I'm proud that Australia's covid response was much closer to that of Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam than it was to the USA and Canada.
modeless 4y ago
Yeah, "not a shitshow" seems like it depends on the eventual outcome here. It may be very well organized but if the virus ultimately wins then couldn't it be called a shitshow retroactively?
- unityByFreedom 4y ago
  The virus isn't winning. Everyone who wanted to be is vaccinated. The thing to track now is severe reactions, not positive tests. The government in Taiwan has already acknowledged that they're probably undercounting cases. Meanwhile, they are reducing restrictions, and less rigorous contact tracing, except for arrivals on the small chance they bring in a new variant.
  - modeless 4y ago
    The virus is clearly winning, it just matters less now. But if it matters less now, it mattered less months ago too. Vaccines have been available for a long time. It seems to me that restrictions since then have been and continue to be a waste.
    - unityByFreedom 4y ago
      Are you in Taiwan and able to assess the situation in person? Restrictions have been small relative to the rest of the world, with the exception of last summer during a Delta outbreak that was later brought down by effective contact tracing. Context and time are relevant. Both Delta and an undervaccinated population were issues months ago. I would not say the virus is winning, nor would I call the response here a shit show. The CDC here has been saying since late last year that we will eventually need to live with Covid when it arrives.
      - modeless 4y ago
        I'm specifically taking issue with the linked article's description of their specific experience in the last month as "not a shitshow", when it is pretty clear to me that in the specific timeframe of last month almost everything they went through, however well executed it might be, is pointless and ultimately a waste.
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
The government is currently in the process of shortening it and gradually opening up now that dominant Covid variants are less virulent than they were last year. https://taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2022/04/26/2003777227 https://taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2022/04/26/20037...
DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
The Shanghai lockdown is working as we speak. Daily cases are down from nearly 30k to under 10k. Parts of the city have no cases, and are starting to reopen. Judging from the experience of Hong Kong, without a lockdown, Shanghai would have quickly reached hundreds of thousands of new cases a day, and half of the city would have been infected within weeks. The death toll would have been several tens of thousands. Instead, the death toll is a few hundred. Ironically, Shanghai is in the situation it's in right now because the city's leadership refused to go into lockdown early on, and just looked on as cases climbed into the thousands before doing anything. Other cities that took action early (like Shenzhen and Gaunghzhou) were able to get back down to zero cases very quickly, without anywhere near as much societal disruption.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  This seems to be the agreed upon uniform story between the various Chinese posters: it's not the strategy, it's the incompetent local Shanghai officials! It's neat, they used the same thing in the UDSSR many times. But it seems unless you bring the China-style lockdown to every other part of the world outside China, it will just keep happening over and over again.
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    This isn't just hindsight. As Shanghai's case numbers steadily rose and the government did nothing, I was telling friends that the result would be a disaster. What really worried me was when Shanghai announced that they were so economically important that they couldn't lock down. That convinced me that they had given up on zero-CoVID and were adopting the Western "living with the virus" approach, without fully admitting it to the public.
- samcheng 4y ago
  This is such a short-sighted perspective. Is China going to stay quarantined from the rest of the world in perpetuity? (COVID is now an endemic virus, like the flu.) It's hard to see China reaching its goal of becoming a world leader if its people must remain cloistered indefinitely.
unityByFreedom 4y ago
> One reason they are not removing it is because the government does not want to be seen as being "wrong" about covid policy. I'm in Taiwan and this doesn't track. Taiwan has succeeded because they have continually adjusted according to research. They were always ahead of the game, having been the ones to alert the WHO of the existence of Covid (see the timeline [1]). There are a lot of politics here, like anywhere. Opponents to the current administration are looking for an edge to break through what's been a phenomenal response from the government. The challengers' chance will come eventually, but I'm not sure it will come as a result of the government's handling of this pandemic. In my opinion, the challengers' attempts to win small battles over which-day-quarantine-should-be-discarded is likely to make them appear more frantic than organized. Rather than organizing, they've been wasting breath over minor quibbles week after week for the entirety of the last two years. It's really kind of unfortunate because instead of competing with better ideas, they keep trying to undermine, yet in doing so they have mostly undermined themselves. [1] https://taiwancanhelp.us/ https://taiwancanhelp.us/

alephnan 4y ago

> it's a huge waste of resources peoples' liberties Are you an actual resident in Asia or a Westerner armchair philosophizing what people in Asia actually want. Here’s a glimpse from actual Asian people, from a democratic country. These people here are being polite and aren’t saying outright, but a sentiment expressed here that’s pretty common is Asian people thinks it’s admirable that Americans have individual liberty, and acknowledge there are pros and cons to that. If you actually understood Asian culture and why these countries have these policies, then you’d know it’s not really a compliment. In Asia, maybe / kind-of means no. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ctmxV-yNhg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ctmxV-yNhg My partner is Taiwanese, and I am American. We moved Japan to during the pandemic because we don’t agree with the West and Americans’ attitude towards coronavirus. There is a lot of overlap between Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan being more “liberal” in some respects and Japan being conservative, but otherwise people from both countries on average prefer personal inconvenience for the collective good, especially given both of these cultures have a respect for the elderly. We prefer what you call “draconian” measures. Let people who are residents in Asia deal with their governments. Who said people want liberty above all else? Freedom requires responsibility, and America hasn’t been for a while. Worry about the host of problems in America, because Asia is doing just fine. People in the tourism industry are incentivized otherwise, but other people in Taiwan / Japan aren’t minding the inconveniences, so why are you? In fact, people are kind of enjoying the domestic venues without tourists, especially given the high propensity of Westerners who refuse to wear mask ( even when they are vaccinated ).

gagorder100 4y ago
Asia is not doing fine and not everyone agrees: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2022/04/19/in-shanghai-anger-and-resistance-are-growing-against-severe-lockdowns_5981000_114.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2022/04/19/in-... The lockdowns are great for the privileged class that "works" via Zoom meetings and can afford to move to another country if the current one does not sufficiently serve its interests.
- alephnan 4y ago
  So you cherry pick an article about Shanghai, and generalize it to Asia? The West conveniently omits Taiwan’s and Japan’s continued success with Covid for 2 years while the West sacrificed millions. I’m living my life and commuting as normal. Commute hours are packed full shoulder to shoulder. I feel way safer than in New York. New Zealand is another pacific Island that received outsized acclaim from the West. Guess what’s the difference between New Zealand and those Asian countries? There’s also Vietnam, which for a country much lower on the economic progression has done exceedingly well. Ofcourse Westerners and the West will say these Asian countries have skewed data because the don’t have tests. It was nearly impossible to find a covid test within a 2 week time frame in my hometown American city with a population over a million and an NBA team. Even then, I had to use a bot to hog a spot, then pay $200. In Japan, you can receive a test on the day throughout the pandemic and it cost less than $30. 95% of businesses in Japan do temperature checks and require hand sanitizers throughout 2021.
  - josephg 4y ago
    > while the West sacrificed millions Australia and NZ are usually considered part of "the west". Culturally and ethnically, this is certainly true. You're frustrated people lump everyone in Asia together, as if its all one country. Please don't make the same mistake with "the west". We aren't one country either. If you want to criticise the USA's handling of covid, do so. Us westerners aren't a homogeneous block either. I'm proud that Australia's covid response was much closer to that of Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam than it was to the USA and Canada.

modeless 4y ago

Yeah, "not a shitshow" seems like it depends on the eventual outcome here. It may be very well organized but if the virus ultimately wins then couldn't it be called a shitshow retroactively?

unityByFreedom 4y ago
The virus isn't winning. Everyone who wanted to be is vaccinated. The thing to track now is severe reactions, not positive tests. The government in Taiwan has already acknowledged that they're probably undercounting cases. Meanwhile, they are reducing restrictions, and less rigorous contact tracing, except for arrivals on the small chance they bring in a new variant.
- modeless 4y ago
  The virus is clearly winning, it just matters less now. But if it matters less now, it mattered less months ago too. Vaccines have been available for a long time. It seems to me that restrictions since then have been and continue to be a waste.
  - unityByFreedom 4y ago
    Are you in Taiwan and able to assess the situation in person? Restrictions have been small relative to the rest of the world, with the exception of last summer during a Delta outbreak that was later brought down by effective contact tracing. Context and time are relevant. Both Delta and an undervaccinated population were issues months ago. I would not say the virus is winning, nor would I call the response here a shit show. The CDC here has been saying since late last year that we will eventually need to live with Covid when it arrives.
    - modeless 4y ago
      I'm specifically taking issue with the linked article's description of their specific experience in the last month as "not a shitshow", when it is pretty clear to me that in the specific timeframe of last month almost everything they went through, however well executed it might be, is pointless and ultimately a waste.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago

The government is currently in the process of shortening it and gradually opening up now that dominant Covid variants are less virulent than they were last year. https://taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2022/04/26/2003777227 https://taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2022/04/26/20037...

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago

The Shanghai lockdown is working as we speak. Daily cases are down from nearly 30k to under 10k. Parts of the city have no cases, and are starting to reopen. Judging from the experience of Hong Kong, without a lockdown, Shanghai would have quickly reached hundreds of thousands of new cases a day, and half of the city would have been infected within weeks. The death toll would have been several tens of thousands. Instead, the death toll is a few hundred. Ironically, Shanghai is in the situation it's in right now because the city's leadership refused to go into lockdown early on, and just looked on as cases climbed into the thousands before doing anything. Other cities that took action early (like Shenzhen and Gaunghzhou) were able to get back down to zero cases very quickly, without anywhere near as much societal disruption.

stefan_ 4y ago
This seems to be the agreed upon uniform story between the various Chinese posters: it's not the strategy, it's the incompetent local Shanghai officials! It's neat, they used the same thing in the UDSSR many times. But it seems unless you bring the China-style lockdown to every other part of the world outside China, it will just keep happening over and over again.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  This isn't just hindsight. As Shanghai's case numbers steadily rose and the government did nothing, I was telling friends that the result would be a disaster. What really worried me was when Shanghai announced that they were so economically important that they couldn't lock down. That convinced me that they had given up on zero-CoVID and were adopting the Western "living with the virus" approach, without fully admitting it to the public.
samcheng 4y ago
This is such a short-sighted perspective. Is China going to stay quarantined from the rest of the world in perpetuity? (COVID is now an endemic virus, like the flu.) It's hard to see China reaching its goal of becoming a world leader if its people must remain cloistered indefinitely.

unityByFreedom 4y ago

> One reason they are not removing it is because the government does not want to be seen as being "wrong" about covid policy. I'm in Taiwan and this doesn't track. Taiwan has succeeded because they have continually adjusted according to research. They were always ahead of the game, having been the ones to alert the WHO of the existence of Covid (see the timeline [1]). There are a lot of politics here, like anywhere. Opponents to the current administration are looking for an edge to break through what's been a phenomenal response from the government. The challengers' chance will come eventually, but I'm not sure it will come as a result of the government's handling of this pandemic. In my opinion, the challengers' attempts to win small battles over which-day-quarantine-should-be-discarded is likely to make them appear more frantic than organized. Rather than organizing, they've been wasting breath over minor quibbles week after week for the entirety of the last two years. It's really kind of unfortunate because instead of competing with better ideas, they keep trying to undermine, yet in doing so they have mostly undermined themselves. [1] https://taiwancanhelp.us/ https://taiwancanhelp.us/